This invention pertains to a cost effective method of installing ground screens, either vertically or angularly, to function as dewatering and pumping wells or monitor wells.
In the past, ground screens for soil dewatering and/or monitoring have been placed into the ground by a two-step operation. First, a hole is drilled into the ground with an auger and the soil is removed from therein and, second, the screen is slipped into the hole. This process, however, has proven to be time consuming, cumbersome and often ineffective, because it is a two-step process and, further, the walls of the pre-drilled hole often cave in prior to the ground screen being inserted.
More recently, hollow augers have been utilized to house the ground screen or casing within the auger and after the hole is drilled the auger is backed out of the ground leaving the ground screen therein. A screen placement method and apparatus of this character is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,833,071. This method of placing ground screens into the ground overcomes the problem of the walls of the hole caving in. However, this method requires that the drilled well hole be substantially larger than the ground screen since the auger, in essence, houses the ground screen or casing. Because a larger hole must be drilled, the method is inefficient in that a greater amount of energy is required to drill the larger hole. Second, the larger hole requirement increases the chances that a rock or other obstacle can be hit by the auger damaging the auger and delaying the process of installation. Further, this method requires a filler material to be utilized around the ground screen or casing after the auger is removed from the hole leaving the casing therein. Naturally, this is both time consuming and costly.